A member of the family that founded one of the United States' first cellular telephone companies is to endow a brain research institute at the University of Washington in Seattle. A range of scientific disciplines there will focus on the neurological development of infants and children.

The Talaris Research Institute is being set up next to the university with a $91 million donation from Jolene and Bruce McCaw. Bruce McCaw is one of four brothers involved in setting up McCaw Cellular Communications, which was sold for $11.5 billion to AT&T in 1994.

According to institute officials, plans call for at least 14 principal investigators to conduct research in areas ranging from molecular biology to experimental psychology. The newly constructed laboratories and facilities will be staffed by 100 support personnel.

The McCaw donation will consist of $16 million to buy a former Battelle institute site, $50 million to build new facilities over the next three years, and $5 million in annual operating costs for five years. Institute scientists will look to major funding agencies for research grants.

Talaris has already hired two researchers from the University of Washington as scientific co-directors — the wife-and-husband team of Patricia Kuhl, former head of speech and hearing, and Andrew Meltzoff, head of developmental psychology. Molecular biologist John Medina will be chief executive, and board chairman is Samuel Smith, a plant pathologist and president emeritus of Washington State University.

The new institute will “combine the science of learning with the practice of learning,” says Medina. He adds that the ways in which infants and young children acquire and process information will be of particular interest.

“The research will be strongly interdisciplinary, combining the efforts of neuroscientists, molecular biologists, cognitive psychologists, computer scientists and educational researchers,” says Medina. “The goal is to understand inherent cognitive and neurological information-processing features in infants and small children.”